Is Google Polluting the Internet?

Pickens writes "In 1998, Larry Page and Sergey Brin made a promise: 'We believe the issue of advertising causes enough mixed incentives that it is crucial to have a competitive search engine that is transparent and in the academic realm.' Now, Micah White writes in the Guardian that the vast library that is the internet is flooded with so many advertisements that this commercial barrage is having a cultural impact, where users can no longer tell the difference between content and advertising, and the omnipresence of internet advertising constrains the horizon of our thought. And at the center of it all, with ad space on 85% of all internet sites, is Google. In the gleeful words of CEO Eric Schmidt, 'We are an advertising company.' The danger of allowing an advertising company to control the index of human knowledge is too obvious to ignore, writes White. 'The universal index is the shared heritage of humanity. It ought to be owned by us all. No corporation or nation has the right to privatize the index, commercialize the index, censor what they do not like or auction search ranking to the highest bidder.' Google currently makes nearly all its money from practices its founders once rightly abhorred. 'Now it is up to us to realize the dream of a non-commercial paradigm for organizing the internet. ... We have public libraries. We need a public search engine.'"

Comments

No we don't.

[xnpu]

Please. Not another sink hole.

Re:No we don't.

[Anonymous Coward]

I had to address this:

In the gleeful words of CEO Eric Schmidt, 'We are an advertising company.'

Check out the video starting at 5:15. While he says this with a smile after revealing that ads are 98% of Google's revenue, I wouldn't go so far as to call it gleeful. Seems the submitter threw that in as an attempt to bolster their argument.

Re:No we don't.

[CAIMLAS]

Maslow's hierarchy is a hack. The hierarchy of needs has no basis in actual, human needs: it was designed as a self-dependent prerequisite, and it's application tends to result in selfish aims alone.

Maslow tried to discredit detractors by emphasizing that his study only examined 'healthy' people and was not applicable to those with mental/emotional/etc. deficiencies. This is disingenuous:

The bulk of humanity will often do things which meet the 'higher' things on the hierarchy while neglecting the lower. They'll spend time, money, etc. for the shelter and care of loved ones while neglecting their own. They'll spend money to gain social standing while things as existential as their rent goes overdue. They'll pursue ideological ends while neglecting basic safety. This can be said for the bulk of humanity, at one point or another in their lives.

What's more, things are often done to meet the higher needs (esteem, self-actualization), in the complete absence of the lower levels. See: the sales of Coca Cola in 3rd world countries.

In contrast, pursuing or adhering to Maslow's hierarchy tends to only be achievable with no concrete acknowledged external responsibilities. It's a pyramid of self-fulfillment. You can't adhere to the hierarchy and be a good parent, for instance, without substantial funds or an external force (eg. government/charity) to aide in the basic physical needs. Ultimately, Maslow's hierarchy seems better - or at least, as good - at encouraging socialist agendas (as I have seen it done) than it does business practice.

Re:Does the Bear poop in the woods ?

[Asdanf]

PS google is willing to invade my privacy and yours with street view; can you do streetview for the personal residences of Page and Brin and the directors and senior executives of Google ?

Yes, you can. I did a quick Google search for [larry page's home address], the first result listed his address, and then Google Maps was happy to provide me with both aerial photos and street view.

Google is polluting the Internet by

[Dishwasha]

causing every website that uses Google Analytics and YouTube to take a horrendous time to load. It didn't used to be this way, but within the past year Google's non-search infrastructure has really not scaled very well.

Re:What we need...

[FourthAge]

The article says:

"Google was originally conceived to be a commercial-free search engine. Twelve years ago, in the first public documentation of their technology, the inventors of Google warned that advertising corrupts search engines... And they condemned as particularly "insidious" the sale of the top spot on search results; a practice Google now champions."

The misunderstanding is obvious. Google's ads are clearly separated from the search result - different style, different background colour. And yet the writer seems to think they are one and the same. It seems he has based an entire article on his own inability to distinguish between ads and search results.

Re:Does the Bear poop in the woods ?

[owlnation]

I am amazed that people think google is (a) a good search engine, rather then soemthing to generate profit for google.

It was, by comparison. When Google first started it was vastly superior to the keyword-spammed search engines such as Altavista, Infoseek, Yahoo, etc. You could type in a word and would likely get what you were looking for in the first page or two -- rather than on page 10, or 30 with the other engines.

The problem is, that Google has not improved. Google Instant does not improve Search -- it's annoying and turns up the same results. Their new image search does not improve the results, just makes it slower to load.

13 years later, and not only is Search not any better, it's actually worse. People have long ago figured out how to game Google. Comparison site scams often appear as the top links on search terms (especially moreso on google.co.uk -- being the site the article is actually about). Wikipedia appears as spam as the top link on almost everything, even when that page is a stub, or just plain crap (due to the skewed page rank of the site -- not the individual page). Searching for an hotel is near impossible. Searching for a product is near impossible. Searching for anything local is near impossible -- you just end up with comparison site spam every time.

The other search engines are currently no better, so there's no point in switching. They, like Google, are corporate monoliths that are almost incapable of innovation.

Search is not going to improve until someone does what Brin and Page did. Two guys with a good idea cobbled together from spare parts in a garage somewhere.